Graph Traversals
Explore graph traversal techniques including breadth-first search and depth-first search. Learn how each method systematically visits graph nodes using queues or recursion. Understand their applications, advantages, and implementation in C#. This lesson prepares you to effectively traverse graphs for problems such as shortest paths, connectivity, and cycle detection.
Graph traversal is the process of visiting all vertices (nodes) in a graph systematically. It is a fundamental concept because many graph algorithms rely on efficient graph exploration.
The two most common graph traversal techniques are:
Breadth-first search (BFS)
Depth-first search (DFS)
Breadth-first search (BFS)
Breadth-first search explores a graph level by level. Starting from a chosen node, it first visits all immediate neighbors before moving to nodes at the next level.
Key idea
BFS uses a queue (FIFO: first in, first out). In C#, Queue<T> is the standard choice. ...